A technique called RFID (radio frequency identification) has attracted attention and has been applied to various fields such as distribution, historical management, article management, presence management, or the like. RFID refers to an exchange of data with the use of a wireless communication technique in a narrow sense. A semiconductor device called an RFID tag (also referred to as an RF tag, an ID tag, an IC tag, or a wireless tag) is used for RFID, and wireless communication is performed between an RFID tag and a communication device such as a reader/writer, so that reading or writing of data can be performed.
By including a memory (also called a memory element) in an RFID tag, a high performance RFID tag can be obtained. In particular, it is preferable that a memory which is one kind of involatile memory devices and to which writing can be performed only once be included in an RFID tag because interpolation of data is not easily performed and security is improved. Such a memory to which writing can be performed only once is referred to as a one-time programmable memory (hereinafter also referred to as an OTP memory, or simply an OTP in this specification) or the like.
As examples of an OTP memory, an antifuse capable of writing data by controlling a conductive state (a low resistance state) and a non-conductive state (a high resistance state) and a fuse type memory such as a fuse are known. For example, an antifuse is known, in which when voltage is applied to both ends of an element using amorphous silicon, silicide is formed in an electrode to short-circuit (see Patent Document 1).
In addition, in order to reduce delay time for reading data from a memory cell in a semiconductor memory such as a RAM, pre-charge of a bit line before performing reading operation is proposed (see Patent Document 2).